More on the Phone-Jamming charges against (so-far) Republican officials. The matter now seems to be reaching into the White House as reported by AP:

Read the full story for many more details, but it should be noted that the White House hired Tobin to work their North-Eastern regional campaign in 2004 even after they already knew he was under investigation for the 2002 charges. He was only asked to leave his '04 post once the reports of the '02 investigation became public knowledge.

(Hat tip to RAW STORY.)

Working on several items, so we'll defer to RAW STORY's coverage of the story.

Suffice to say, Karl Rove spoke to Republican lawyers this weekend (carried on C-SPAN) and thanked them for their work ensuring "clean elections" in 2000 and 2004.

He singled out Mark F. "Thor" Hearne by name. Hearne was the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. who, along with RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, created the so-called non-partisan "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR) just three days before being called to testify before Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) U.S. House Administrative Committee hearing in March of 2005 on the Ohio Election. The front group, which declared tax-exempt 501(c)3 status, has still failed, to our knowledge, to disclose any information of it's funders or proof of their 501(c)3 non-profit, non-partisan status. They operate out of a PO Box in Houston, TX, though neither of their founders live in Texas.

ACVR was the only "Voting Rights" group called by Ney to testify at the hearings, and identified himself only as a "longtime advocate of voter rights" in his testimony. He failed to mention his connections to Bush/Cheney '04 Inc.

Hearne and ACVR have done little more since they opened shop beyond creating propaganda reports to suggest that their is an epidemic of Democratic voter fraud in the country to encourage state legislatures around the country to implement Democratic voter disenfranchising "Photo ID requirements" at the polls. Their charges of a voter fraud epidemic has been roundly disproven in various court cases around the country. (Though it does appear that at least one voter, Ann Coulter, seems to have engaged in voter fraud lately.)

The "non-partisan" Dyke went on to work for the White House to flak for John Roberts during his Supreme Court nomination, and now works out Dick Cheney's office.

Ney, who pushed the so-called "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA) through Congress in 2002 --- the bill which urges all States and Counties in the country to impliment hackable electronic voting machines by 2006 --- recently stepped down from his chairmanship of the House Admin Committee after being named in the on-going Jack Abramoff investigations. His former chief of staff, David DiStefano is Diebold's main lobbyist in congress, as BRAD BLOG reported in January, and Diebold has made thousands of dollars in so-far unexplained payments to Abramoff's old firm, Greeburg Traurig.

See RAW's story for Rove's comments about Hearne and the other "non-partisan" GOP attorneys over the weekend.

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

On April 7th, Wired News first reported on a class action lawsuit filed against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). AT&T is accused of allowing the NSA to monitor phone and internet communications without a warrant.

An AT&T whistleblower, Mark Klein, has come forward with testimony and documentation. Klein provides specific details about how the spying program intercepted AT&T customer communications. The NSA installed "secret rooms" in AT&T switching centers throughout the country. Live communications signals are split off into the secret room. Powerful data-mining computers installed in the room can sift through the millions of live signals.

CNN put together this short video report including comments by an EFF attorney.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...
Audio in MP3 format...

Today after giving another Iraq/War-on-Terror PR speech at Johns Hopkins International Studies School, President Bush took questions from students in the audience. When compared with recent Q&A sessions, the President appeared to be relaxed to the point of laughing off the some of the tougher questions.

Bush may have offered a little bit more information about his role in using the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) for political retribution. He was asked how future intelligence employees could trust the Executive Office in light of the Plame Wilson case. Bush responded that he had declassified the NIE "for a reason" but refused to say much more.

This video has about 8 minutes of clips from The President's Q&A session.

By John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Normally this space is taken with my ideas of what are the "Top 5" voting news stories for the week. Today I am going to use this space to talk about what I see as the beginning of a disaster in the making with our elections. This isn't the election fraud that some point to when they talk about the vendors and some elections officials. It's not about recounts or audits. This is a real, get your hands around it, happening problem that will disrupt our election process if we do not do something about it now. While we have been involved in all of our issues about Direct Recording Electronic (DRE or "touch-screen") voting machines or paper ballots the electronic voting machine vendors have been wreaking complete havoc across the country.

So far this year two states have conducted primary elections. In Texas there is at least one candidate who has stepped forward and has challenged the election because of anomalies in vote counts and known voting machine failures. One county's machines counted some votes up to 6 times which resulted in approximately 100,000 more votes being counted than were cast. Though the vendor, Hart Intercivic, initially blamed the problem on human error, they finally had to admit that it was a programming error and not poll workers or voters who had erred. In Illinois some county officials are threatening to withhold final payment of funds on contracts with Sequoia Voting Systems because of failures with their machines that ended with results in the primary not being known for over a week after the voters went to the polls. In both states the involved vendors were very successful in the media with deflecting the blame from their machines to "human errors" or "glitches". However, when you listen to people who were there and who saw and worked through the problems you get a very different picture...

We haven't been able to cover it at all until now with so much going on, but the latest ad by VelvetRevolution.us which ran a couple of weeks ago in the Op/Ed section of WaPo hit such a chord we were able to raise the money to run a similar version of the ad in last week's NY Times.

(DISCLOSURE: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR)

The ad, which focuses on Bush's recent drumbeating and chest thumping for a War on Iran in light of his plummeting poll ratings (haven't we seen this bad movie before?), brought still more interesting reaction in it's second incarnation. More on that in a second.

We're kind of tired, at VR, of being out in front of so many of these issues (Election Reform, Media Reform, Downing Street Memos, getting Out of Iraq, Accountability for Bush/Cheney) before the media and the politicians figure it out. But now it seems that's where we are again. For an example, see Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article just out, which reports the Bush Administration "has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack."

As if that's not disturbing enough, Hersh's article, as well as another report today from WaPo points out such an air attack is being planned to include the use of tactical nuclear weapons! Hello?!

Rather than waiting until after it's a done deal, as with Iraq, the time to push back is now. Especially since Fox "News", as David Edwards reported this morning, is already back in their reliable embedded position for the Bush Administration and this morning were all too happy to smear Hersch on the air.

Most of the reaction to VR's ads on Iran have been extremely supportive. And then there was this postcard we received late last week...

FRONT:

BACK:

Oh, well. Can't please 'em all. (And we're still trying to figure out that "ADL ISLAMIC" comment which seems a tad oxymoronic to us, but what do we know about Christianity?)

If you'd like to piss off other good "Christians" like our big fan above, please donate generously to VR so we can continuing spreading the love --- and getting the word out to the public about what's really going on here! --- through more such campaigns in the future.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

In a recent article, published by the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh presents Bush Administration plans to take military action against Iran. According to Hersh, high ranking members of the Administration are advocating the use of nuclear weapons in an initial air strike on Iran.

This morning, Fox News anchors attempted to trash Hersh's reputation and defended the use of nuclear weapons on Iran.

Had a hoot sitting in as Guest Host for my buddy Peter B. Collins last Thursday on KRXA in Monterey (and a few other affiliates). If you didn't catch the show live, please enjoy the archives below as you see fit. Some fun, and occasionally harrowing, interviews here for your listening pleasure...

HOUR 1 [MP3]
BRAD rants on the state of our electoral system meltdown and interviews FAIZ SHAKIR, of the Center for American Progress, on the breaking news that day of Bush revealed as the Leaker-in-Chief.

HOUR 2 [MP3]
A full hour-long interview with the great and high-larious cartoonist/blogger, TOM TOMORROW of This Modern World. On tooning, on blogging, on his new book, Hell in a Handbasket (please buy it!) and on the most obnoxious bumper music I could possibly find --- Also he points us to a 2003 strip he did on the horror that is Diebold Electronic Voting Machines.

HOUR 3 [MP3]
First half-hour, Emery County, Utah's 23-year elected County Clerk, BRUCE FUNK, on being locked out of his office after having the temerity to allow an independent examination of Diebold's touch-screen voting machines in his county. He explains the harrowing details of what was found and what has happened to him since. Don't miss this one, especially if you haven't yet heard his story. You can send a note of support for him right here...

Second half-hour, the legendary ED ASNER --- Lou Grant himself --- on Hollywood and Politics, his encounter with Ronald Reagan and all other manner of stuff. Includes Asner telling Brad to "Shut up!" What more could ya want?! Enjoy!

Tom Tomorrow (real name, Dan Perkins, by the way) of This Modern World was a guest of mine on ThursdayThe Peter B. Collins Show where I was Guest Hosting. (Audio archives posted here.).

After complimenting him on his keen ability to reflect the current zeitgeist well ahead of anyone else, I asked him how he chooses his topic. His answer, paraphrased, whatever he happens to find funny. I asked if he found anything funny about Electronic Voting Machines.

Apparently he did. And, as usual, long before most of us understood the true nature of the threat to democracy posed by these god-awful machines. He pointed me to this Halloween strip originally published on 10/23/03 (notice the name on the computer monitor)...

No wonder he calls himself Tom Tomorrow...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Yesterday our friends at OpEdNews.Com featured an article that includes an interview with the former CEO of AccuPoll, a voting machine vendor that recently went bankrupt. In the article by Sean Greene of electionline.org the CEO, Dennis Vadura is quoted as saying:

Now, finally, an industry insider and 'mover-and-shaker' has stepped forward to echo what many of us have been saying for the past two or three years. The remaining vendors are doing all they can to prove that Mr. Vadura is right. That fact is borne out by the following two stories:

In Nebraska, home state for Elections Systems and Software (and home of one of the owners of this private corporation, Omaha World-Herald), 69 of 93 counties do not have their paper ballots for early voting even though early voting began on Monday. Nebraska joins Indiana and other states that are not able to conduct elections because ES&S cannot provide the ballots that they are contractually responsible to deliver. In defense of it's partially owned subsidiary, the World-Herald misinforms it's readers with this gem:

There is no new type of ballot required by HAVA and there is no standardized form for optical scanners. This is all just hype to cover-up for the failure of ES&S to do its job.

In another indication of a vendor's failure to meet its contractual duties, the Richmond (IN) Palladium-Item reports that Fidlar Elections, a mid-west representative for Diebold, has failed to deliver paper ballots to 11 Indiana counties that can be read by optical-scanners. The state's mandated absentee voting (early voting) began on Monday and the bad ballots were not reported until Tuesday so all voters who voted on Monday are now being given an opportunity to vote again, when good ballots are received.

Quality control? Apparently not, after all its just elections. As Mr. Vadura correctly states, "You just have to look at the litany of problems and it points at one thing, bad fundamental design, and not enough checks and balances".

Yesterday our friends at OpEdNews.Com featured an article that includes an interview with the former CEO of AccuPoll, a voting machine vendor that recently went bankrupt. In the article by Sean Greene of electionline.org the CEO, Dennis Vadura is quoted as saying:

Now, finally, an industry insider and 'mover-and-shaker' has stepped forward to echo what many of us have been saying for the past two or three years. The remaining vendors are doing all they can to prove that Mr. Vadura is right. That fact is borne out by the following two stories:

In Nebraska, home state for Elections Systems and Software (and home of one of the owners of this private corporation, Omaha World-Herald), 69 of 93 counties do not have their paper ballots for early voting even though early voting began on Monday. Nebraska joins Indiana and other states that are not able to conduct elections because ES&S cannot provide the ballots that they are contractually responsible to deliver. In defense of it's partially owned subsidiary, the World-Herald misinforms it's readers with this gem:

There is no new type of ballot required by HAVA and there is no standardized form for optical scanners. This is all just hype to cover-up for the failure of ES&S to do its job.

In another indication of a vendor's failure to meet its contractual duties, the Richmond (IN) Palladium-Item reports that Fidlar Elections, a mid-west representative for Diebold, has failed to deliver paper ballots to 11 Indiana counties that can be read by optical-scanners. The state's mandated absentee voting (early voting) began on Monday and the bad ballots were not reported until Tuesday so all voters who voted on Monday are now being given an opportunity to vote again, when good ballots are received.

Quality control? Apparently not, after all its just elections. As Mr. Vadura correctly states, "You just have to look at the litany of problems and it points at one thing, bad fundamental design, and not enough checks and balances".

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

Yesterday, Mr. Bush delivered another Iraq War PR speech which was sponsored by the nonpartisan World Affairs Council of Charlotte at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina.

After the speech, Bush accepted questions from the audience. Harry Taylor shamed The President with his question. Taylor mentioned NSA domestic spying, detaining Americans with being charged, policies that hurt the enviroment. Taylor told Bush that he was ashamed of the U.S. Government. Taylor finished his question by saying, "I would hope you have, from time to time, the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself... inside yourself."

In this video, Soledad O'Brien interviews Harry Taylor about his televised of berating President Bush.

I'm Guest Hosting the Peter B. Collins show today and have booked an amazing line-up of Guests! Please tune in! This will be our Open Thread for during the show, so comment away!

Showtime is 3p-6p PT (6p-9p ET) on KRXA 540am in Monterey, CA and several other affiliates.
Listen online here! Call in toll-free if you like at (888) 579-2540.

Guests to include...

+ This Modern World cartoonist and blogger, TOM TOMORROW!
+ FAIZ SHAKIR from The Center for American Progress' Progress Report
+ Emery County, UT County Clerk/Hero BRUCE FUNK (Diebold's latest scapegoat!)
+ *** PLUS: The legendary ED ASNER! Yup, Lou Grant his own bad self!

Spread the word! Tune in!

UPDATE 4/8/06: Audio archives from the show now here...

Racing to prepare for Guest Hosting the Peter B. Collins Show later today, so can't give more context for now (more on this during the show today, no doubt), but this out this morning from the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.

Regular BRAD BLOG readers will be familiar with the stories of the three Cuyahoga County, OH Elections Workers who have been indicted on felony charges for gaming the 2004 recount, but this report provides many more details and corroboration from the Prosecutors. It also reminds us, that though the Elections Workers have been indicted on felony charges, they continue to work at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections! Only in Ohio! (well, okay, maybe Florida, too...)

This is incredibly mind-blowing...Even to us...

UPDATE 1/24/2007: Two of the indicted election officials found guilty of gaming the recount, charged with maximum penalty. Details...

Originally Allegheney County, PA had hoped to use Diebold's electronic voting machines --- until they found out that Diebold machines were hackable.

Then they decided instead to go with Sequoia Voting Systems instead --- until they found out that their machines are hackable too.

Yesterday, with just six weeks left before their primary election, and against the wishes of Allegheny County's Chief Executive who felt it was safer to stay with their old lever systems, Allegheny decided instead to go with new ES&S touch-screen voting machines.

ES&S, of course, is the company whose machines failed all over Texas during the March 7th primary in Texas, leading to state-wide election contest by a Republican former Supreme Court Justice. ES&S saw more than 30% of their memory cards fail in recent pre-election tests in Summit County, OH, more than 1000 cards fail in NC, and their machines failed to work completely this week as early voting began in Indiana.

Good luck with the new ES&S voting machines Allegheny County, PA!